If the content is not stored locally and DRM free, then you don't own it. Don't pay for content that you can't own. π΄ββ οΈ
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Is there any platform or medium where I can buy locally stored and DRM-free software? Even if I buy a game on disc I am fucked, cause most games need updates. I can only name GOG.
Given the recent controversy, it calls into question the definition of the word 'buy.'
GOG is the only one that I know of too.
itch.io is fantastic. Mostly indie stuff with some bigger name stuff, but it's by far the best out there for devs.
It's hard to find quality games in the sea of single dev weekend projects on itch io...
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Buy the disc, put it on a shelf and download a clean copy.
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I bought DRM-free TV episodes from Google Play (IIRC). Everything was great until codecs got updated a couple of years later and the videos were suddenly jerky to the point of unwatchability.
Even when I own it, there's no guarantee I get to keep it.
You can probably play it properly on a PC using something like VLC (A pretty powerful video player)
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Uh, that's practically all software and games these days.
In this case Sony is taking away TV shows that people purchased. They can be purchased on physical media that will be playable as long as you have the disc. The DRM on DVD and Bluray discs can be easily removed to make backups that will play on anything forever.
As for games, everything on GOG is DRM free. They have downloads for the installers so you can keep a backup copy to install decades from now even if GOG is long gone by then.
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Sony understands only one language... MONEY. I stopped buying their products since they installed a root kit decades ago in my computer to prevent it from ripping my legally bought CDs to my computer. I had to reinstall windows to get rid of that virus. Never again! And all my electronics were Sony back then
Hey, just wanted to say Iβm glad a few of us remember the rootkit fiasco. I still wonβt buy Sony products today.
Same here. This was such a hostile move I never bought anything "Sony" after that.
Don't forget the "fix" Sony offered after they were initally caught was an even MORE invasive rootkit. π«
Yeah, fuck those rootkits. Despicable.
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What I love about this whole thing is that it's not just Sony's fault but they're getting all the blame because WB would pull all their future content if Sony bad-mouthed them.
Sony choose to not offer refunds. Sony knew the contract when they agreed to sell the content. When something gets pulled from steam I can still download and install it.
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I'm just shocked how many commenters here somehow seem to think that Sony can choose for their own profit to engage in contracts with mismatched responsabilities - i.e. a short-term contract with WB right next to a much longer term responsability towards retail customer - and not be financially responsible towards their retail customers at one end for the losses that arose from the termination of the very Contract Sony chose to sign at the opposite end.
Imagine if you hire somebody to build you a garden shed and they paid some fly-by-night company for the wood because they were cheaper and that company just to took off with the money. You think they could just legally turn to you, their customer, and say "sorry, we chose some fishy guys for the wood for your shed and they took the money and didnt gave us the wood, so now we'll keep your money and you're not going to get your shed. Bye bye!".
Contract Law isolates Contractual responsabilities in any one contract (including the implied contract of a Retail Sale) to the parties in that contract alone exactly because long term contractual commitments would be de facto impossible in a world were every purchaser also ran risks on every one of their supplier's own contracts as purchasers, in turn having the risks of their suppliers' suppliers' and so on as deep as the chain went.
I think most rational people hate the game rather than Sony directly. We don't care if that's the rules Sony or anyone else has to play by. It's time for the industry to evolve or die.
In-fact I reckon if we see digital retailers reject "selling" digital content because it's not profitable due to end customers rejecting the terms, the studios licensing the content would evolve overnight.
I've been boycotting Sony since the late 90s exactly because they not only played the game in the most anti-consumer way possible, but they very activelly lobbyied for the kind of legislation like the DMCA.
This is maybe one of the companies who spent the most money to make "the game" the incredibly rigged mess it is today.
Your naive "blame the game" reaction is exactly what companies like Sony want: blame the puppets not the puppeteers.
Ever since their Media Production Division took over the management of the company in the 90s (before it was mostly the Engineering side that led it, hence why they were once famous for the exceptional quality of their eletronics) they've very much been reliably acting in the most corrupt, abusive, evil ways possible.
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Reminder that the largest brands regularly and shamelessly steal from small independent artists to sell for profit, knowing that the artists don't have the resources to do anything about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20230726050616/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/arts/design/digital-art-copyright-marvel-panini-wizards.html
And these are the companies trying to convince you that pirating big name media for your own personal use is theft.
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They've done this to me. When it first came out,I bought the fallout 4 DLCs. I cleared my email one time and deleted all those old purchase receipts.
One day last year, I pop in fallout 4 and go to my file, and it says that I don't have the dlc that corresponds to this save file. I know I bought them, so I go to the psn to redownload, but it's asking me to pay. Long story short, I call Sony, my dlc purchase vanished at some point, and since I deleted the receipt, Sony refused to give me the content or money. They say I can't prove I owned it, even though my files say so.
Anecdotal, I had the same with EA. When Origin first launched, the two games I had in my EA account disappeared. Do amount of battling with their support got me anywhere, even though I had the retail copies and the serial keys.
Got to the point where I gave up. Rather play games I actually wanted to play, to than Spore and The Sims 3.
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Kinda slightly sensationalist title but yep...
We are having a good discussion about this in AskLemmy: https://lemmy.nz/post/3983363
"What is the legal difference between owning digital and physical media?"
As a side note, how are we going with instance agnostic post IDs? I can only post a link that uses my home instance, but obviously most of you won't be on lemmy.nz and will have to do some fuckery to open that in your home instance if you want to be able to comment.
Fortunately Sync just redirects to a link on my home instance. I know I saw a GH issue on what you mentioned but I haven't checked it in a couple of months.
Edit: found it. Still in discussion phase. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2987
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Sony is one of the vilest corporations out there.
Fuckers literally installed rootkits on customers' computers (across the board, you listen to a CD on your computer- bam) to police DRM.
Check "Sony Rootkit Scandal", they got caught and were sued... yet here we are. Again.
Just feel like I should at least add two more things here:
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Storing information do their customers as plaintext data, then getting hacked and losing all that information (infamous PSN hack);
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Releasing a portable console that cost between 250 and 300β¬, promising support for it then 2 years in, give up on it, never officially tell customers, but have one of your higher execs tell the press said console is a great "accessory" for the PS4.
This is why I don't personally buy Sony hardware.
The Vitaβs failure is really weird when you consider that they had already produced a successful portable system that had years of support, the PSP.
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Don't forget: Selling the PS3 with Linux support so that they could pay taxes as if it was a PC as well as to justify the high price to consumers. Then removing Linux later through a mandatory update.
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Since we're sharing YouTube videos around, I suggest this video by Jeff Geerling about how to legally own and stream media (Piped link)
In the US, he is still breaking the law ripping discs. It is against the DMCA to circumvent the DRM on the discs. So he is really just pirating by a different means as far as the industry is concerned.
He is far less likely to get caught doing it that way though.
"People's store-bought DVD collections are always copy-protected or DRM-ed. In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which made it illegal to circumvent DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection on DVDs. This means that it's illegal to create a software program that can bypass DVD DRM protection. Another way of saying it is, the moment you crack DRM to rip the DVD, you've violated the DMCA.
However, the DMCA contains an exception for "fair use." This means that you can legally rip a DVD for personal use, as long as you don't violate any of the other copyright laws. What does this mean in practice? You can rip a DVD for your own personal use, but you can't distribute the ripped file to others. You also can't make a copy of the ripped file for someone else.
So, in a nutshell,Β if you rip DVD's and restrict the copies to your own personal use, you're probably safe."
https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/tips/is-it-legal-to-rip-dvd.html
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If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing.
~~If buying is not owning, then~~ piracy is not stealing.
It's its own, separate thing.
Iβm not saying this isnβt wrong, because I believe it is, but the fact is that if you digitally own anything from video games to music to movies you should understand that it can be taken from you without a momentβs notice. Is it right? Hell no! Will it continue to happen? Hell yes!
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One thing I've not seen discussed, is this actually Sony's fault or are they not behest to the companies that hold the content rights to do this?
I've not looked into it much beyond comments so I don't have the answer myself.
I don't know if it makes any sense to assign blame here to another party than Sony. As a customer who bought a license to watch these shows, that's the company that you have an arrangement with. It seems that their licensing arrangements with Warner Brothers were limited time, and either WB isn't inclined to renew them or is asking more than Sony is willing to cough up.
Probably a combination of both if I had to guess. WB is seeking to maximise the value of their own ~HBO~ Max streaming platform, so they want the content to be exclusive and not license it out to others. At the same time Sony is probably not excited to keep spending cash every few years just to keep content available to customers, they're not making any additional money from that.
So the end result is the current situation. Obviously customers agreed to whatever terms Sony put in their EULA at the time so I'm sure it's legally covered and whatever, but it seems pretty scummy and misleading nonetheless. Like, if they were honest on the purchase screen and said "you can pay $20 for the right to watch this season of mythbusters, but any time we like we can take it away from you again and there's nothing you can do," how many people would have bought that? But effectively that is what people bought, they just weren't aware.
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